Classic Poem

Robespierre reigned in the Place de Grêve,
And in distant Avignon his word was doom,
When a band of royalists, piously brave,
Were marched to the edge of their gaping tomb:
As they went on their way, they sang—
Tender and full the chorus rang:
‘A l'heure suprême, Mère chérie;
Ora pro nobis, Sainte Marie.’

The maiden young, and the grandsire old,
And the child whose prayers were shortly told,
And the curé, walking side by side
With the baron, whose name was his only pride,
The noble dame and the serving maid—
Neither ashamed, nor yet afraid—
A wonderful sight they were that day,
Singing still, as they went their way: ‘A l'heure.’

One of their murderers, waiting nigh,
Heard them singing as they went by,
And smiled, as he felt the edge of his blade,
At the fulness of music their voices made.
‘We will stop that melody soon,’ said he,
‘In spite of their calling on Sainte Marie.’
But one by one, as those voices fell,
The others kept up the chorus well: ‘A l'heure.’

When all the victims to death had gone,
And the last sweet music was hushed and done;
When the pit was filled, with no stone to mark,
And the murderers turned through the closing dark—
One of them wiped his sharp knife clean,
Strode over the soil where the grave had been,
And hummed as he went, with an absent air,
Some notes just caught by his memory there: ‘A l'heure.’

And when the thought of that day grew dim
Those obstinate words still clung to him.
He was a man who said no prayers,
But his lips would fashion them, unawares;
They mixed with his dreams, and started up
To check the curses bred in his cup;
They wove him round in a viewless net
Of thoughts he could not, though fain, forget,
As he still repeated, again and again,
The ghostly air and the ancient strain: ‘A l'heure.’

Thirty years were counted and o'er:
The lilies of France bloomed out once more;
The grapes which hung on the vines were ripe,
Like the penitent man on the threshold of life;
When the Angel of Death with healing came
For one who in Lyons had borne no name,
But ‘Le Frère d'Avignon,’ for many a day;
Who, living and dying, would hourly say—
'Twas on his lip as he passed away:
‘A l'heure suprême, Mère chérie;
Ora pro nobis, Sainte Marie.’